Sand (and salt) has been in the news lately and it’s brought attention to free sand provided by many area municipalities. Residents are permitted to come to the Granville town garage and take ‘reasonable’ amounts of sand to their homes for use on driveways and walkways and other areas where traction might be needed during these cold and icy winter months.

Granville Town Highway Superintendent John Tanner said Granville provided free sand to residents for as long as he can remember.

“John Cosey was here for 30 years and I’ve been here for 16 and (the policy) goes back before that,” Tanner said Monday.

For the past handful of years the town crews have brought a truckload of sand down to the highway garage to make it more accessible to the people. Prior to that, the pile was near the salt storage, but that created a bottle neck at the filling site in Middle Granville and for safety reasons the sand is now at the highway garage.

Some come and put sand into a bucket and other come and throw shovels full onto the bed of a pickup truck, but Tanner said he’s never seen abuse of the service, nor would he allow it. No one is going to use a tractor to get sand here, he said.

Tanner said he would be surprised if he questions as many as two people a year, mostly because they’re putting sand into a vehicle with Vermont plates, but he’s never arrived Monday morning to find the pile gone.

The sand pile for the town of Granville sits about 50 yards off of county Route 24, off to the right-hand side of the yard when viewed from the road. On the reverse side of a road sign the word ‘sand’ has been scrawled with an arrow indicating the pile.

Residents of Granville can come and take some sand, within reason.

Although there are no hard and fast rules regarding how much sand can be taken and how often, Tanner reiterated he’s never seen someone abuse the service by taking to much.

“They paid for it with their tax money so if they’re taking a reasonable amount I don’t have an issue with it,” Tanner said.